Sunday, we played V:TES in the South Bay. This was made possible by a player moving out to the area, leading to critical mass. Now, not looking to play every week, but we think something like every other week will be possible.

Played a four, a five, a four, and a three with people coming and going throughout the day. This being this area, four games meant playing from 10:30AM to 4:30PM, roughly, with no significant food break.

I had time to build one new deck. Since my extensive personal banned list only applies to tournament play, I decided it would be interesting to play a deck with Conditioning in it, well, and Govern. So, I went Celerity/Dominate with beats largely through .44s. This was reasonably entertaining made more so as twice I had Brandon as prey with his Akunanse deck, and I, of course, was running two Tranquility in my deck.

The three player game didn’t involve my doing a whole lot besides failing to blow up a location with a Bomb. Two vote decks passed votes and one of them ousted the other.

In the five-player, I played Baali of the Name 1.1, and it entertained me as it routinely does where I’m amazed it can do anything in the modern meta. It ousted my prey, a Matasuntha deck (of course). It burned my predator’s She Who Watches because a Pre/Obf/Aus stealth bleed deck with combat ends and … stealth … totally gets blocked by Baali and has no way to defend against two ranged agg.

It was pleasant. It was V:TES. My Cel/Dom deck actually plays cards unlike so many of my decks, so I nearly ran out of cards in one of the four-player games.

Did I learn anything? Do I have any philosophy to spew? Was there the funniest play e-e-e-ver?

The most notable thing was getting together with V:TES players and playing V:TES.

Now, I may push the banned list envelope more in casual play because it shakes things up. Maybe I’ll even build decks more regularly and play some cards I’m less familiar with than Tranquility. But, for a change, nice to just play the game and not overwrite about it.

Do I just keep saying the same things as if we are in a chronic hysteresis?

I don’t think I’m going to come across as chipper in this post. I can’t be mister positivity 100% of the time [… uh …].

I’m not as engaged with local cons. When you ponder which DDC’s were more memorable out of 20+, it’s not like there isn’t a been there, done that aspect to it. Why don’t I feel the same way about Gen Con when I play HoR a lot and may end up playing the same systems over and over, like Four Colours Al Fresco for a while or Feng Shui or whatever?

Because in person play of HoR locally is very different from in person play of HoR at Gen Con, for instance. At GC, you get the core players and people who put thought into metagaming the campaign, even if it’s just deciding how to form Battle Interactive tables. I’ve never played any 4CAF outside of GC, nor any Babylon RPG, etc.

KublaCon is more interesting to me from a gaming standpoint because I get to play card game events that don’t exist outside of the con, e.g. Shadowfist tournaments. Have to defend my title as Classic Champion for the sixth largest economy in the world this year, for instance.

But, let’s get back to DDC.

No hotel this year. While I didn’t mind driving back and forth in the moment, I needed a break and DDC wasn’t much of a vacation. Now, my first vacation of the year is coming up soon … At some point, get on topic.

I skipped Friday because, sincerely, I’m not in the mood to game Friday nights at cons after being at work much of the day. It’s just a desire for a mental break. Now, I’m willing to game if there’s something I’m particularly interested in playing, but there are few things I’m particularly interested in playing. Again, RPG events may sound good, but I’ve had the spectrum from amazing to atrocious, from excellent to bad, from solid to mediocre, unforgettable to forgettable. I am more likely to enjoy playing than thinking about the possibility of playing. It’s like how I have no problem working out but hate thinking about working out so I hardly ever initiate the exercise.

Also, I don’t think my friends and gaming associates realize how little I have always been interested in quick games or pick up games or whatever. I invest in certain games (or types of games) and want to play those a lot, and I play what other people want to play that doesn’t feel like it will be a drag. I’ll demo games I haven’t played, but I don’t go out of my way to do so unless they have a hook that is extra hooky for me. I’d much rather talk about a game that interests me or even hear someone’s review of a game that doesn’t interest me than play filler games.

Saturday, I get in a bit after 7:30AM and find ample parking at the hotel. I get my usual breakfast from Bagel Street Cafe of pastrami and swiss on a poppy seed bagel (because they don’t have the bread rolls baked yet) with a large peach smoothie with whip cream.

Bagel Street Cafe. It’s a chain. I don’t think I’ve ever been to one other than in San Ramon. There’s one in the shopping center where I get my hair cut and I’m not entirely sure where it is. Yet, conwise, I’d be happy to eat twice a day at the place with the occasional dinner somewhere outside of the adjacent shopping center where I can get a burger or fish and chips or whatever.

I show up like 8:30AM for my 10AM Traveller demo. Try to work on my piracy deck for a Developer’s Corner article on travellerccg.com and fail to make much progress as people are already showing up to demo the game. Demoing happens, with Jeff leading. It’s only 2 hours for the event, but we continue demoing for another 2 hours. Then, food, or, as I like to call it, smoothie number two, berry [blackberry?] smoothie this time.

Saturday night is V:TES, which is a couple of games. We call the second game after my Hermana Mayor deck has gotten a VP from my prey’s Anarch Revolts and ousts a second player, while my grandpredator finally stealth bleeds out my predator. The first game was a spin on Hatchling.dec where I had .5 VPs at time and 3 VPs playing the game out with Arika as my predator and my Aus/Pre/Vic bruise bleed deck as prey. Sucked up a bunch of Starvations of Marena, but my prey decked.

Not home too late … if I wasn’t old and decrepit.

Sunday, roll in an hour later as I didn’t get out of bed at 5:20AM to build decks, like I did on Saturday. Get the strawberry smoothie and am pleased with it, as well. Which to get Monday? Which?

Demo, similar structure, different people, at 10AM. Then, tournament time. Time for ruthless beats. Time for glory, honor, status, and swag. Except, I’m one of the guys who made the game, so like none of those apply.

Match 1:

I’m playing against a precon. I’m not winning. I then have a crazy complicated turn after having relatively straightforward turns earlier. Oh, I’m playing my Prepared Scout deck from my website article, with a few adjustments to the crew and maybe one or two other cards.

I have a Body Pistol in play and shoot Rika Honami. I Freelancer Flint into play and jettison her. I have played a SureShot Missile Turret and Just a Little Longer … another SureShot Missile Turret and I Glitch one of my Turrets to reuse it so that I do 6 or whatever damage as a pirate to bankrupt my opponent. May not sound that intense, but I think also Freelancered another crew in play for some reason and used my Starship Graveyard to get back one of those Turrets.

As usual, I was virtually bankrupt myself. A Scout may always be prepared, but this Scout is always poor.

If I hadn’t taken out Rika, he might have completed his contract and won.

Now, I think I only won – not because my constructed deck was the wasp’s elbows – because I understood the game far better than someone who just started playing in the Sunday demo.

Match 2:

Paired off with another 1-0 player, some guy named Jeff who has played the game before. This was a very casual event due to people kind of getting in late and not being quite sure who was playing. He got out to a lead. At a certain point, he was up 13-11 in VPs. Then, his friend showed up who was planning on playing and took over.

On the penultimate round, I went for a big contract to try to get 6 VPs and win. I got 5. I had numerous ways to get 6, but I had two cards left in my hand and none in my deck and didn’t have the money to play both cards or play one and use my Luxury Suite for the 20th VP. I was ready to concede as I thought that round was my only chance, as bankruptcy or my opponent getting to 20 seemed inevitable. With one card left, we went to the next round. I used my last card to jump to a cheap survey contract. With zero cards in hand or deck, with two crew who would have been jettisoned if my opponent had not healed each for one damage for amusement value, I scored three more VPs and my opponent got stopped by my deck that doesn’t actually interact hardly at all with my opponent (except when I can pirate on the last round for the kill) because he didn’t choose to gain Survey with the Empress Marava Far Trader during the resource phase and my last complication play was Electro-Magnetic Interference. Of course, if he had pirated me, I was dead.

In other words, if Jeff had played the game out entirely, he would have been 2-0 instead of me.

At this point can make a point by pointing out that knowledge of games is really helpful in games that aren’t luckfests of lucksackiness. Many, many plays could have prevented me from winning, but, when you get dumped into the middle of a game that you aren’t particularly familiar with and are playing against someone who helped create the game, sometimes you don’t win.

Match 3:

During the second round, I had more than 30 cards in my discard pile. In two rounds, I played or used about two-thirds of my deck. That’s some two legit two spit right there.

I outraced my opponent who didn’t have enough ways to stop me from gaining VPs. He had a slow start and was way behind and only because I do a great job of getting close to bankruptcy did I manage to get to 21 VPs with only a couple of cards left.

My intention is to write a “takeaways” article for our website. An obvious takeaway is that knowledge of the game matters. And, this is good. It shows we came up with a game that rewards things that should be rewarded.

Another takeaway is that the precons are fairly playable. Only one other player built a deck and he was 0-2 after two rounds of playing against precons, finally getting his piracy deck to work in the third round.

Went to dinner at a Cajun place and I got boring Cajun Burger since I was in the mood for a burger.

At one point, Brad and I were talking about FCGs versus VCGs. We are VCG fans. Do I go into a rant now?

I guess. It seems gratuitous to rant in a separate post.

VCGs are better. Here’s why.

Complaint number one: I don’t get all of the cards when I buy random packs. If you want to get complete sets, go to eBay to get complete sets. If eBay doesn’t have them, reach out to the publisher or the player base and offer to buy complete sets. Meanwhile, without randomness, you lose sealed play outside of “duplicate”, draft play that is remotely interesting, and you even lose any interest in opening up any product since you know exactly what will be in there when you do. Well, okay, *I* lose interest in opening any product. As much as I often feel bad opening up boosters for games where I need copious numbers of certain cards, I also find it interesting to occasionally crack a booster, though more so with Magic where I don’t own all of the cards already.

Complaint number two: VCGs are too expensive compared to FCGs. If you are the type to buy three core sets of L5R and be satisfied, you aren’t playing a CCG, you are playing a boardgame with customization. You may feel differently, but that’s the way I feel. I consider the correct number of L5R core sets to be minimum 18. Every three core sets allows for two decks (with extras, of course). So, 18 core sets is 12 decks at once (in truth, slightly more because you will avoid splashing too much of the same thing because you crave variety). I’m a card flopper, 12 decks is a norm. I range from 7 decks to 22 decks built at once for most card games I play. I think I have around 20 Shadowfist decks built at the moment, about 12 V:TES decks (not counting decks for my limited collection experiment and the like), and only 4-5 L5R decks because I’m not taking L5R seriously yet. Not that it’s a fair comparison because my Magic decks are almost all Type P decks, but I have about a hundred of those built. Amazingly enough, 18 core sets is like $600-$700 plus getting like three copies of each expansion pack so that you have nine copies of every expansion card costs more money, though only nine copies of cards sounds rather low to me as some of those cards may go in every deck. Then, if you really aren’t into being able to build every deck possible for a game, like I am, pretty easy to play CCGs for free. Want to play Magic for free? Just ask people for their extra commons. Want to play V:TES for free, find me and I can hand over a thousand cards. Will you have exactly three copies of every card for a three card limit game? No. But, I imagine the only need to have such a collection is for tournament play, in which case can just borrow a deck. CCGs are about infinite variety. I embrace that. Hard for me to get into the mindset of only wanting to have like a thousand cards for a game, even if I’m also willing to play card games with only like a thousand card collection … up until the point that I end up with 20,000-40,000 cards.

Now, obviously, not everyone approaches gaming like I do, which is probably why I have this blog and not everyone who plays games has this same blog. I mean, look at the market – we never considered putting out Traveller as a VCG because I’m in some sort of minority based on visible opinion.

Get home early, watch some Olympics because freestyle skiing halfpipe qualification is interesting. Land high – ooh, not that high.

Monday is the key day. The day that doesn’t involve showing people how to play the greatest card game, no, the greatest game ever possibly thought of in all of the multiverses in all of time, even the funky nonlinear time(s). Monday is the day I decide to go with the berry smoothie again. Monday is the day I fail forwards …

Brad is running 2d20 Conan. For most of us, this is the first attack, the Pictish Frontier of Conan play, the day that ole Ian forgets to bring the character sheets he has been carrying around all weekend.

Character creation is involved. Already, the suffering. Plus, certain people, who shall remain nameless until I out him, did not back the Kickstarter and, thus, we are trying to learn how to play with four players and two core books.

Spoiler: we didn’t like the system. Now, we (most of us) played Conan d20 for like 9 years. Sure, it wasn’t perfect [see blog posts for mini rants], but it wasn’t hard to jump into. This was just hard. For some, the dicerolling wasn’t clear.

For me:

Antagonism

I read a long thread on rpg.net about Conan after I got home. There were posters who talked about how antagonistic the game feels with Doom Pool uses. I felt that in my half a session. Em, we didn’t finish an adventure because Brad got tired of trying to run the system and it was close to the end of the con. Now, I can’t say I’ve never felt like a GM was shutting me down when I wanted to do something, and maybe the adventure in the book just sucks, but I felt like there was way too much preventing us from doing things, which seems like the opposite of what narrative mechanics are intended for.

Complications

I grew so tired of these right quick. Because geniusness also can include overlooktheobviousness, I didn’t realize until our postgame analysis that the reason rolling 20’s comes up so much more often than d20 is because … er, 2d20 is twice as much as d20, while 3d20 is like more than twice as much as d20.

Fail forward, “yes, but”, complications – all of these strike me as actually getting in the way of just playing a game. They put more pressure on GMs and players to justify mechanics rather than just ad hocing on the fly as you are freewheeling … okay, okay, I’ll hinder myself.

Gamistier Than Thou

I’m going to pummel this live donkey in another classic gaming rant.

Narrativist mechanics aren’t narrativist – they are gamist. Because, pssst, let you in on a secret that nobody else can possibly derive – mechanics are gamist. “But, old, decrepit, get off my AD&D 1e lawn dude. You don’t understand gamist/simulationist/narrativist. You are going to be defeated once I enlighten you to the true RPG metaparadigm whatsit.”

The more you mechanize a game, the more the focus of the game shifts from story to mechanics. This is why I don’t like crunchy systems.

Before I forget, let me tell a story, like old, cranky people are wont to do. When Origins was in San Jose, I attended and I was introduced to Immortal: The Invisible War.

I played two sessions run by Ran Ackels, who some of you may know as the guy who created Immortal. I retain, in my feeble memory, a recollection that the way he ran these games was “Roll a die [d10], and I’ll tell you what happens.” That is narrativist play. Dice exist to give some level of randomness to short term results; as the party succeeds or fails at things in the short term, the long term is adjusted.

They don’t exist to be an economic engine. Momentum, Doom Points, Fortune, Complications are all mechanisms for having players and GM focus on and manipulate mechanics.

Do I hate Fortune? No. It’s obviously related to Bennies in Savage Worlds which I do pretty much hate (slightly). It reminds me of Fate Points in d20 Conan, Hero Points, and their ilk, which I actually like.

You know what else I like? When we played oConan, we got ladybugs (reroll for you) for writing fictions/session reports, spiders (+2 to roll) for bringing food, arrowheads (reroll for anyone, including NPCs and antagonists) for extra effort. Are these gamist in the way trying to maximize Momentum or trying to build Fortune is?

No.

They are modifications to existing rules, whereas Momentum is a subgame. This was my problem when I was exposed to Fate. I felt like Fate was far more gamey than d20. You do things not because you want to but because the *mechanics* of the game reward you for doing them. I’m now playing a game of manipulating mechanics rather than playing a game of seducing the immortal witch (“failed Diplomacy, reroll, reroll”).

Do I hate Doom/Momentum? *shrug* Maybe.

Accomplishment

Fail forward is, in other words, succeeding. If you can’t actually fail at whatever the adventure is supposed to be about, what sense of accomplishment do you get?

This is a tricky topic that I’ve touched on before – the topic of players feeling a sense of accomplishment. I worry about this when running systems where you either succeed at die rolls or fail at die rolls. Because I can’t escape the epiphany that what I enjoy as a player is feeling like failure was possible but not actually failing, so accomplishment is an illusion of perceived ability to be disaccomplishmentary.

In oConan, we failed. Oh, we succeeded fairly often, at times because of pulling a reroll out of our gamebags, at times probably because we weren’t doing something all that difficult, it just seemed difficult. But, we also straight up failed. We ran away from demons loosened. We ran away from Pict harriers. We Fate Pointed to be found on some island beach or in wreckage at sea or whatever that I no longer remember.

And, in seven years of one campaign, things moved forward and stories were told and retold. This is what the intent of these narrative mechanics is – stories move forward with setbacks until you climax [sic]. But, you don’t need that in any given session. You can get that across sessions to where a campaign isn’t some exercise of fudging [ha] results.

I don’t dislike the system (the part of the system that doesn’t involve Momentum, Doom, or Complications). Though, I’m trying to figure out how you can build a functional sorcerer in the beginning, which I guess I could go to the forums and read about. I just find it incredibly clunky and extremely gamey. Just the fact that PCs get to decide what order to take actions in is itself gamier than rolling initiative. Yes, it is. It becomes a subgame, and the more subgames you have, the more game you have.

There’s also way too much emphasis on equipment, with a lot of equipment being obscenely expensive. I bought a bow and that used up all but one of my gold. A crappy bow, by the way. This was something d20 did really well – outside of primary weapon, equipment was something you hardly paid any attention to. Sure, armor could be good, but armor could also suck.

I might get used to the economics of the subsystems of Momentum and Doom that are built into the system. I’m not sure I’ll ever think they add value to playing, but rewriting the game to take them out is a waste of time, when we could just go back to playing d20 or I could homebrew another Roll & Keep variant.

So, yeah, DunDraCon. It was good. Traveller isn’t perfect but playing Traveller gets me thinking more like a player of the game rather than being in developer/designer mode. I think about how the game has all of these cards that you want to play but can’t at the same time, which seems positive. Conan was something worth doing even if it wasn’t nearly as fun as our old convention sessions tended to be. I got to talk to people. I had four smoothies in three days, though the waistline impact is not a victory.

If only we could get more Traveller cards to the people who are enthused about playing. If only I was a beam of sunlight reflecting off of a unicorn’s horn during a musical on Christmas Eve. If only I remembered to pass the character sheets to Brad before Monday. If only I could remember what else I wanted to write about so that I could get to 4000 words in this post.

Saturday, had two V:TES tournaments. It shows how I am so much more into things when I play them regularly that I only built one new deck for the events and didn’t really have any idea what I would play in the second tournament.

As I see Mark working on some fattie and with Eric bringing out quick Rake and going through vote stuff, I consider Nkule useful for my second dude. That proved pointless. My first dude is Socrate. Mark, Eric, Rick all play first turn good stuff masters – Dreams, Info, … something else.

Mark avoids blocking due to the threat of combat. Rick Slaughters me some revealing a bunch of Dodges. My turn three Tunnel Runner is blocked. I eventually have Obaluaye and Jubal in play.

Eric fails to block some important stuff forward early on and has no bounce for when Lucian gets around to doing his thing. He votes a bit, but it has minimal impact. Rick keeps taking my cards and plays more than half of them, including Predator’s Communion with Forestal.

I bleeds. Mark gets Eric. I don’t fear Lucian much as I’m sitting on an Archon, but I decide to bleed out Mark with Strange Day, having few of my bleeds bounced even though Mark has Black Lotus and Louis Fortier Advanced to assist in the realm of bouncing.

In the endgame, I am out of library. Can’t stealth anymore and concede after Brinksmanship as, even if I get all of my other actions through, I’m one pool short of ousting. Yup, 2/1/1 scoop to Brinksmanship.

I played poorly in this game with some early decisions, but I don’t recall specifically what they were. Getting so old.

Since I pulled the cards for Brandon’s deck, I lamented how much we failed to block early Governs. I don’t remember Eric doing much, though he passed a couple of Con Boons, neither of which were for Akunanse.

I did get an early Tunnel Runner, along with Aisata, Nestor, Uchenna. Very interesting to have both Aisata and Uchenna in play, as I was trying to churn into bleed/stealth to finish off Eric. He was at 10 pool, I bled him for 9, including using a Daring the Dawn to cycle and … the card after my replacement was plus bleed.

I fended Brandon off for a while, Dodge being pretty useful at not allowing him to cycle Hidden Strengths. But, the problem is that any bleed that goes through is unfriendly. David was rather impotent until I was ousted. Brandon unnecessarily bled for 4 against Eric, which got a bleeder burned, greatly slowing down his assault on David’s weaponless region.

Again, I made mistakes. I played Predator’s Communion twice when Brandon had Anarch Troublemaker in play, rather than wait until he starts acting, which was incredibly stupid, yet, oddly, didn’t hurt me given how things turned out. I did something dumb early on.

But, mostly, the tournament was all about being one card away. In a 12 player tournament, 2 VPs was a shot at making the finals. In fact, there was only one GW from the first round as one table timed out with 1.5/1.5 and another table split – the Brinksmanship GW, of course.

The Fates were not Cheated.

Finals:

Brandon wins.

Pickup Game (5)

I played my Anthology Instantaneous Transformation deck, where I was all like “But, how do I get by his dude?”, then realized my turn one Anarch Railroad made me unblockable as I stole two pool from Powerbase: Washington D.C. [yup, P:WDC], burned counters off of Powerbase: Barranquilla, both my predator’s cards. Nevermind that IT has an inferior version.

I had my Fangs Pulled and got Famed and got ousted by bleeds because my grandpredator’s Nergal deck, for some reason, didn’t bleed one more time to oust my predator. I did Minor Boon when my grandprey’s Ahrimane got ‘schrecked by my prey’s Tzimisce deck. Lambach did his usual thing of stealthing by Muricia and friends.

Rick: Zillah’s Valley, followed by Annazir, followed by StG, followed by StG, followed by two players getting the Edge and trying to burn a StG and my trying to get the Edge … and all failing, including Devin failing twice in one turn, followed by StG three.

After we got our shattered counters, I ousted Rick. Then, our long national nightmare lasted a few rounds. Devin seemed good since he had vote bloat, but he poofed. Mark bled me for a lot when my deck refused to give me intercept or bounce after I spent three intercept trying to block Rick’s first StG. I got bled a bit more and was shattered.

Mark had a huge edge in the endgame and still was in trouble because it’s hard to play the game when you are guaranteed to lose 3 pool every turn.

I played horribly. I could have Washed Rick’s Secure Haven on Annazir … when I had a Soul Painting in hand. I let The Capuchin block my Carlton because I actually have very little idea what unprinted cards do relative to my card knowledge of printed cards. I didn’t play my bleed cards correctly to give myself a chance at ousting John, though he had wake/bounce, so it didn’t matter as much. But, probably the worst thing was getting cute with transfers. Rather than bringing Sheila Mezarin up third, I brought out Ian Wallingford, which meant one less possible bleed every turn.

David got depleted quickly, unsurprisingly, but he brought out Muddled and Ossian and Caitiff got much beat down. Mark had an incredibly awkward game, at one point getting a Samedi off of The Capuchin burning with Soul Gem. Kenneth had Creepshow Casino to get one action by Capuchin (who was still in play most of the time), and there was much talking about how to have a game when he could lose two minions per turn and get Obedienced by his predator.

Eventually, David got ousted after the game got stale. John bled me for 5 and I bounced to Mark and ousted Mark late to get the all important second VP.

Finals (4th seed):

Alex was fifth seed. Brandon chose to be behind me. Mark chose to be behind Brandon. Kenneth chose to be my prey. In thinking about what people brought out (as opposed to how Brandon’s deck was supposed to play), for Kenneth, he would have been better as Alex’s prey.

Kenneth could barely do anything forward and I dealt with him to let him get a Prince if I could move the Edge regularly. I got early Carlton. Brandon got some bleeds through on me as I slowed Kenneth very early, then got lots of minions in play, where I had only Remilliard, Sheila, Creamy, and Carlton to defend myself. So, I would bleed Kenneth for 2-3 each round with one action, and Brandon and I would fight Toreador style with dodge defeating my possible Catatonic Fear/Target Vitals plays.

Alex did pretty much nothing forward and never tried dealing with Kenneth. Mark finally got his combo online and started bleeding. Brandon’s big problem was his first four vampires did not have Auspex. He finally got one of his five superior Auspex dudes into play. I ousted Kenneth as time was running down. My only hope was Brandon lived, due to seeding. Brandon did not have enough bounce to live. I reduced Alex’s pool some, but the timing wasn’t right to finish him off … except, I did get him to 2 pool and probably could have cycled more in the game, needing an Aire to finish him off. Not that I deserved to win. Alex never should have been in trouble and time was on Mark’s side, plus he was unoustable due to his bloat, and Mark played well to stop bleeding me as time was running out as my hand was full of bounce at the end of the game.

Even if I help Alex do pool damage forward, not enough time to go through Mark’s pool, and he could try just walling up as I win if I oust Alex or if Alex ousts Mark. A pretty boring game for me as I barely interacted with predator or prey after the first few turns.

Considering that I either discarded my Soul Paintings or had them get blocked during my games, and that’s the only thing remotely interesting about the deck, Fate decreed that someone who played better and built a more interesting deck won.

Problem was my other decks were rather janky or boring or one was a deck I had already won a tournament with. While the last is really fun to play, no, seriously, I have a deck that’s fun to play and it somehow won a tournament, though even more seriously, I have enjoyed replaying some of my other tournament winning decks, I considered how completely uninteresting it would be to have two tournament wins with the same deck archetype. After all, if I did win with that deck again, it would radically increase my Blessing of the Name count in my TWD card counts.

Thanks to Mark for organizing, to the players who dragged themselves out to play a game I quite enjoy playing, to my carmates for making the trek more pleasant than just driving for hours while tired. The locale is good.

What I did suggest, since two tournaments in one day is quite tiring, was doing tournaments more often, having one in a day, and doing casual play around it. As Devin just moved to the South Bay, we may also regenerate a South Bay play group! Like a phoenix rising from an ash heap and sucking blood in the city after dark … or something like that.

I never got much response to this as an email or as a blog post. Every time I read it I’m reminded that sometimes I entertain myself in profound ways. Lot of times I only write somewhat along the lines of what I want to; this is a case of writing just the way I wanted to. This and old tournament reports help justify the [Classic] posts.

Is it better to watch episodes of YGO! first or read this first? Note that I don’t think you need to know anything about V:TES besides that it’s a card game for this to have some level of meaning.

Profound? Not so much. I didn’t analyze courtier schools as much as analyzed them for my own interests, which has little application to others. However, I did settle on my two HoR4 possibilities being a Miya Herald and an Asako Loremaster, with the latter maybe being a better choice in hindsight and the former working adequately.

A callout because I don’t think this got a lot of attention, though I may have lost so much of my old V:TES audience that anything V:TES is not going to get as much attention. While I didn’t aim for solutions to other people’s problems, I thought I did a good job of pointing out reasons card floppers seem to struggle building V:TES decks more than they do other CCG decks.

Btw, while I’m fine with V:TES continuing as was, if I were going to reboot it, card limits. Card limits produce a far more digestible game.

I was really getting to like how California decided to play with each other. The reason to highlight this post was not only because it was a last hurrah of sorts but because it’s good balance for me to point out when I suck, even when it doesn’t involve wandering around Berlin.

That I may read Xanth novels or watch Inuyasha or whatever may not be touchstoney enough for my audience, but one hopes the audience knows something about Sherlock Holmes. I thought this did tie together something important about gaming with an important observation about more mainstream entertainment.

It’s long, therefore it must be good. Insert banal joke. Why call this out and not Book of Fire review in the previous Best of …? Well, I did kind of call out Book of Fire by not calling it out. My frustration with the rather poor series got me motivated to explain why I thought early 4e supplements were superior supplements.

If you understand why this report of casual V:TES play is … important? … interesting? … entertaining?, then I think you get more value out of my blog. If you think this was dumb, especially the play reporting, then I’m going to disappoint at times. If I beat a zombie pony with certain comments in various posts, this sort of post cuts to the heart of the matter (in a far more subtle and therefore geniusy way).

Is it heartening or disheartening that so much of what gets read in my blog are posts like these? Did I ask this question before? I used to have an audience for V:TES, and I get why that doesn’t seem to be as important because I don’t play as much and, thus, spend less time talking about the game and people I used to play with don’t and, maybe, there are fewer people playing in general. I wonder what V:TES players do consume. Regional forums?

Anyway, I rated stuff. I’m not aware of anyone else rating this sort of stuff, therefore I win the blogosphere? I could try to clickbait by putting this sentence in my preview – Kim K. or Haifa Wehbe hotter in her prime? I’ve never used a picture of the former for a NPC, I did use the latter (also Adriana Lima in a very different campaign). All I got was comments about how HW wasn’t what people thought of as a “girl next door”.

I haven’t really changed my opinions on how bushi rank. Maybe I’d get more argument from folks if I posted on forums instead of in a place where I can control the message.

Speaking of winning. Look, everybody has bad ideas and a lot of people have good ideas. I just happen to have good ideas that occasionally get shared (when I’m not sharing bad ideas). And, no, I don’t think the R-5 technique is overpowered compared to other R-5 techniques in 4e.

I had a coworker note that I was dead inside (recently). Is that better than being dead outside? Seems like it. I enjoyed putting together this post. Again, I got really, really tired of doing the Zodiac posts back in the day. I should have fun on rare occasions. Harkening back to yesteryear pleasures me (well, when it’s about things like gaming).

That aside, what’s the importance of this post? Look, I have done things others haven’t. Sure, I’m not likely to be a Hatamoto in the L5R LCG and I was never a World Champion at any CCG I was ranked in the top 10 in the world for and I’ve never been credited with breaking a non-playtest play environment and I have lots of opinions on things I don’t know jack and diane about. But, I’ve also taken a number of CCGs seriously. There’s some probability I may know something rather than just blogging made up words.

On another note, I stopped reading Magic articles because they became hard to read. Why do people do that? I may not particularly want to play Magic, but I find Magic interesting.

Is HoR important to me? Right this last day of 2017? Today, no. Yesterday, no. Day before that, no. Pretty much since Gen Con 2017 ended, no. And, that’s become the norm. This post addresses why it’s so easy to lose the plasma on HoR play.

That being said, I’ve gotten a lot out of HoR. I really like 3e/3r/4e basic mechanics. I’ve had some great play experiences. I’ve met some people I really enjoy doing things with. I played in an epic home game because of HoR. So, at some point, I’ll look to ramp up, again. We might be able to play some missed mods next weekend. It’s just brutal how disengaged I become during the months when there isn’t anything going on.

I did post stuff in May and June, in case you want to relive more of my 2014. This post has to be great … cuz I’ve seen it get some continuous reads in 2017. BattleTech is such an interesting game in that it’s often awful to play yet is so evocative. Well, it can be fun … and I tell you how.

This has very little to do with gaming. But, it hints at something that I’ll mention because I doubt other people would make the same connections. I’m quite fortunate to be able to have a variety of first-world problems. Gaming in the form I consume it is a first-world activity. Gaming can be really easy. Bust out Advanced Squad Leader and make up some homebrew rules for simultaneous turns and you are platinum. But, sometimes, you can run into problems of people having other things they need to do besides play games, like raise children or work. Here, my problem was that I was getting closer to living an adventure yet couldn’t make a connection to improving my gaming experiences, something so ridiculously first-worldy that I get … amused. Now, that’s not all downside since I get to Beware of Invisible Cows, keep it real, et al. This is not the post to get much out of, unless you want something from this blog besides gaming thoughts, like tourist suggestions on the Islands.

I do seem to have some portion of audience who finds travel log stuff more interesting. Btw, would you be shocked to hear that my ideal lifestyle would be “travel the world and play games”?

I believe there’s plenty of room for other types of L5R campaigns. Now, I don’t see the people I play with being into some of the types, but they exist. Where this has maybe a touch more value than it seems is that it was before I started running LBS – Black Water Lake [sigh], and it helped inform things I tried in that campaign, a campaign I was actually more happy with than most. I’m still into the idea of LBS as a setting (well, part of a setting) because it addresses some of the problems Rokugan has a setting. (Topic for another time?)

You know what else my two long-running campaigns had? My writing fics for them. It adds so much to the experience. So much of game time is spent on combat, rolling dice outside of combat, arguing about what to do, arguing about treasure splits [not really but sadly this has actually happened], looking up rules, etc.

Well, that was a lot of posts. As much as I feel like I’ve lost some of the magic early on with more profundity, I also can see where I can keep going far, far into the future. As long as I throw numbers into more posts.

Friday, played two games of L5R in like 3.5 hours. That was not thrilling. In fact, after we were done, the question was asked, “Do we enjoy playing this game?”

It’s unclear whether we do. I continue to compare the game to chess. Everything you do is a “move”. While not impossible to come back from being behind, it can be draining to try to come back from behind – more so than the game already is. A significant difference is that it’s not so clear when the game is essentially unwinnable, for one thing when is a game essentially unwinnable? 10% chance of winning? 5% chance?

I played Crab in the first game and my opponent conceded with something like one province broken. I don’t think we broke a single province in Lion vs Crab in the first three rounds. My first round Hida Kisada was still in play at the end, with both of us down to one card in hand at one point. He sent three Lion, including Matsu Berserker and a dude with a Fine Katana in against my revealed province, Charged Toturi in, and I still won the conflict. I got down to 5 Honor and, then, had like twice as much Honor as the Lion not long after, being around 14.

One of the big differences for me with playing this game versus the multiplayer CCGs I’ve been playing is that I enjoy far more when I’m doing well. As long as I can do amusing things in multiplayer CCGs like … well, see below … I don’t need to be winning or end up winning to enjoy the game. But, I find that L5R isn’t much fun when you feel like you are losing. So, I’m not surprised that we called the game where his board would be clear and I’d still have Kisada in play for another round.

Second game, I played Unicorn vs Dragon. This was very entertaining to me as it’s obvious that Unicorn should have a board of four characters – two courtiers, a shugenja, and a monk, with no cavalry. That Unicorn should have three out of four guys honored. That the attack on the stronghold can be 24 military with Cavalry Reserves in hand because a one cost dude is a 6/6 and because hardcasting Moto Horde is totally normal. I am down on Ide Trader. Just inclines me to jump through a bunch of hoops to trigger ability, though that’s what Unicorn is mostly like – spend lots of effort just to get back the cards and fate you spent trying to get cards and fate, while your smallish dudes can be easily stopped.

Still, I have cards coming, so I might find deck construction interesting enough. Actually, thinking about it, L5R is being a lot like constructed Magic to me – fascinating from a deck construction standpoint, relatively unpleasant to actually play.

Brandon brought out Anneke, which led to Mark and Brandon “talking”. I had lots of ways to deal with agg, so I often was blocking Baron Dieudonne, Adana, or Lydia. Mimir did eventually get Disarmed as did Aksinya, but time ran out by the time the latter happened and Mimir came back to agg hands someone after being Disarmed.

I couldn’t put any forward pressure on, but that was a function of lacking ousting power in the deck. I did Theft of Vitae someone, though. Carol was doing fine until Mark got Talbot’s out and just murdered everyone. Brandon lost a dude because of Adana and Mark wouldn’t help bloodhunt her, so Brandon blocked Lydia getting Preternatural Strength, and Anneke got diablerized. Brandon got ousted. And, that was it for the three hour game.

Mark played Vaticination, looked at five players’ hands and discarded my Skullduggery. You can have a lot more fun playing in NorCal.

I repeatedly blocked with Monica Chang because she was my most effective defense, playing Diversion at Thaum and being able to play Crawling Chamber. I got out The Medic and Laura Goldman reasonably early. Yes, that was my board. Three vampires in play with a total of eight disciplines, where no two vampires shared a discipline.

Rick Shattered two Gates and got hit with Sensory Deprivation and, later, Pentex. I called Reckless Agitation and ousted Mark, going to 20 pool. Rick gave us shattered counters because nobody once tried to remove a Shatter the Gate. Alex died. I brought out Alabastrom, who in this deck Forced March. We ran out of time, but, after time, I got Rick low and Brandon caused me to go to zero pool, where Rick Life Booned me and I tried to oust Rick which made it impossible for him to Parity Shift Brandon. In a replay, if we were going to play it out, Rick and I probably talk about how to play out the endgame so that Brandon doesn’t just win.

I also Free States Ranted with a 3-cap to reduce two vampires to zero blood. My Diversity got blocked when we all had shattered counters by not my predator.

So, V:TES can be played a number of different ways. I was commenting to Brandon on the drive back that I enjoy it most when it avoids being completely noncompetitive and when it’s too competitive. Would I ever play this deck in a tournament? Of course not. I’m just trying to play cards I’ve never played, like my entire Anthology Set crypt.

I had fun. As I said recently, V:TES is something I can look forward to because it is so often enjoyable the way I play it. The question is whether L5R can be played in a way where it’s actually fun for everyone.

If I didn’t have to do something soon, I’d probably post my decks since it’s unlikely I’d ever play either again. Both decks need more ousting power, and the latter’s crypt may be funny, but it isn’t that interesting to me. The Medic also needs way more Freak Drives than what I was running. I should have played Skullduggery with him before it got discarded, but oh well.

On August 5th, 2017, I was in Washington D.C., watching the premier screening of the Abaarso School movie at an event where cocktail attire was expected. I borrowed a blazer, but otherwise I wore what I might wear to a game convention.

The piano bar after party had singing (by the pianist) so painful my musician brother and I desperately wanted to go get pizza elsewhere.

Let’s start with the first reason this has anything to do with gaming. The students trying to get placed in US high schools, prep schools, universities are coming from a situation that I just can’t process. The 60 Minutes (yes, the TV show) producer who did a panel after the screening asked Harry (my brother who made the movie with Ben and Kate) to contrast the opportunities available to someone who went to Thomas Jefferson High School in the NoVa area with what the Somaliland students had to deal with.

Role-playing games. An opportunity to live out, to whatever dicechucking degree you wish, fantasies unrelated to your lifestyle. For someone who has had it easy (that being me) by growing up in US suburbs, gloss over upbringings that involved true hardship as some characters may have had. Economic position, educational prospects, ability to make choices, etc., etc. etc. While RPGs are a great way to just “it’s clobberin’ time” some hours away each week like hitting a sports bar and pounding back some brewskis (I assume people call it that), it’s not a bad thing to take a moment and try to get into the headspace of what it’s like to live in a completely different milieu.

I did not play any games in my 1.5 days in Virginia/DC. There were scenes in the movie of students playing cards and whatnot. But, the second way this trip relates to (my) gaming is that I missed out on a V:TES tournament weekend.

I know Mark and Kenneth won tournaments. Eric sent me a picture of a Sens. Depped Laecanus with Praxis Seizure: Stockholm, which is probably more than at least two injokes you may not get at all, but maybe you will. But, I have little sense of how things went, probably because lots of people use Facebook and I don’t.

Given how rare V:TES play is, this is a significant lost opportunity. Now, I obviously prioritize family stuff over gaming, but it’s an unfortunate result that I could have avoided if I had been more on the ball about suggesting when the tournaments should have taken place. Actually, the weekend before Gen Con is usually going to be okay because it’s unlikely I would have travel I can control, knowing that back to back trips is suboptimal.

I am so disconnected from V:TES play, but, then, this year has been unusually heavy with travel and, er, with Traveller. That’s … symbolic?

When in town, we usually get together for Thursday night Shadowfist. In our last session, we played three games. That’s not a good thing. Our short games, well, our short four-player games, tend to be bad. We had two games that felt like three-player games in that someone got out to a strong position, failed to get “regulated”, then won because people’s decks are way too big and inconsistent and/or lack character stoppage.

I completely failed from a metagame standpoint playing a deck full of edge hate in the first game, where no one had edges in play. I really need to build some new decks. I keep wanting to play more Final Brawls, but I just don’t own that many that I can find.

Speaking of failure, in the business trip leading up to hopping off to DC, there was no time for mahjong, my VR experience was lacking any actual play, and my friend’s phone cover of “Winter Is Coming” had pretty much no impact because I may be a nerd, but I’m an iconoclastic nerd who has never read Harry Potter nor A Song of Fire and Ice, nor made any effort to watch their visual media unless you count looking at a screen on a plane. Nor did I hit Core Gaming Salon, as there were two other Americanos in Shanghai for me to have Italian food with, and I was only there for a week.

Been playing around with the True Dungeon phone app, discovering a real bug and a faux bug. The faux bug is what I want to talk about.

What are the most contested equipment slots in TD? For me?

Neck. I was heavy Amulet of the Champion in my builds until I realized Charm Necklace probably does me more good, while Exalted Creeper Amulet is amusing, plus Amulet of Treasure Finding is necessary for our fourth and fifth characters, and a host of other stuff is irrelevant because it’s not as good but sounds cool.

Wrists. I can’t even decide on wrists for my primary build. Bracers of Fast Fitness is my preferece, but, if I have to burn stuff like in Grind or Hardcore/Nightmare, I guess I go Bracelets of the Cabal. For other builds, Bracers of Supreme Archery, Charm Bracelets, Fast Fitness, other stuff all contend.

Feet. I want to own a bunch of Boots of the Four Winds, but I’d rather play with Boots of Might or maybe even Boots of the Marauder. All comes down to whether playing normal dungeon or not. Not a lot of choices but ones that I constantly toy with.

Charms. This is a recent phenomenon. For the longest time, charms and ioun stones were two things my collection was really weak in. Now, the three charm limit is impactful, as I frequently am happy to pump Dex at a cost of Str, yet Vicious Charm isn’t making the cut anymore. Charm of Enlightenment is taking off as I realize just how bad non-healers want to not have embarrassing Will saves … just in case.

Least contended slots?

Fingers. Sure, my wizard builds could do more ringing, but I struggle immensely with finding a second ring for ranged fighty builds even using first slot on Ring of Heroism. It’s currently easy for me to level up builds as I can just Ring of Heroism up some build, except so many of my builds run the Charming Trio that RoH is unnecessary. Obviously, if I had a certain Legendary ring or a certain Eldritch ring, things would be different, but I don’t. I’d really like to see a ring that increases physical ranged damage by something reasonable, like 1 point, to avoid making ranged Ranger even more IO’sP (probable gross exaggeration as ranged Ranger gives up double attack Ranger). I could, of course, pick up the rare saves boosters to have something that is theoretical good stuff – shows what sort of holes exist in my collection that I can trot out more URs than rares that do something.

Legs. I really don’t know what pants to run when not going Kilt of Tavernbane. When I go with free action pants, I’m defeated by how Boots of the Marauder provides free action.

Head. Either Templar Helmet, Defender Helmet, Redoubt Helm, Crown of Iron Will, or Charming Crown. Charming trumps Iron will, but I only own one Charming. Templar will normally trump Defender, but I own only one Templar set. Blessed Redoubt might suffice, but Redoubt doesn’t really at the moment, especially since I won’t own one until Gen Con. Charming and Templar don’t contend with each other.

Shirt. I often don’t even know what to run unless it’s Linked Shirt of Healing for everyone. Shirt of Blessed Strength for those rare STR based builds I do, of course.

Most binary slot?

Waist. Belt of Blessed Constitution or Girdle of Frost Giant Strength. That’s it. That’s all I’m going to run, unless I end up with a Viper Strike Belt at some point.

So, you may have heard that Gen Con is in August. I wonder if it’s going to be a zoo, given that it’s sold out. Sold out. Interesting comments as to why moving to Chicago wouldn’t be better. I wonder what next year will be like. Will some folks be so turned off by the excessive number of attendees this year that attendance would actually be lower than recent years? Unlikely. Probably get new blood who takes the place and everyone will hope hotel situation will ease when it won’t be GC50.

For most of our group, it’s lots of TD and HoR. Will let you know how that turns out in a couple of weeks.

Privilege. Play games. Travel the world. Question why people want Italian food when in China. Get pizza in Georgetown at 1AM. Afford my TD collection. Just so fortunate and useful to remind myself that it could be so much worse.